Abandoning Tech

Abandoning Tech

Well, maybe that title isn't quite right.

Changing how I use tech

There, that's better!

This year has been a tough one for me, both personally and professionally. I've spent way more time than I would really like to admit working, particularly at the beginning of the year and during the holiday season last year. Lots of really big projects, a recent promotion, basically a never ending stream of work being done and added to the pile. And what would I do to unwind?

Click the button on my KVM, swap to my gaming PC, and continue using the computer.

Needless to say, I think I'm about having enough.

Being more thoughtful

As I've talked about in a recent post, I've been getting more into reading, particularly on physical books (and you should check out my reading list too!). It's been a great way for me to focus on something other than my computer and immersing myself in a different world for a little bit. I admit it is nice to have the tiny bit of escape effect it has, but in all honesty, I think the biggest thing for me is I'm starting to slowly lose interest in some of my long term hobbies from over-indulging. And I don't like.

I've been taking some steps to try to lower my overall tech usage. For starters, I recently bought myself a basic Casio watch to replace my Garmin smartwatch. I thought that tracking my workouts and other health stats would be neat but they did the opposite for me - it just caused me anxiety by constantly monitoring those numbers and wondering why they weren't moving as fast as I wanted them to. I've started taking notes in a physical notebook again too. I DO eventually move them into Obsidian so that I can back them up for long-term safety (especially for my work notes, which is where this practice really shines to solidify thoughts), but pen and paper is so much easier for quickly jotting things down for me. I've also started to set some sane timers for the top apps on my phone. I've even added a widget to the home screen that shows me the top apps by screen time so it's in my face.

Building better habits

There have been some stumbles along the way this year - I've definitely fallen off the lifting wagon that I was pretty successful with this year, and I've been in a bit of a funk the last few weeks. I need to remind myself that it's all about the incremental progress that gets you to your goal. Nothing is going to happen overnight, and the same can be said with forming good habits and getting rid of old habits. I know a lot of people like to wait until the new year to start their habits but for me, I think that's just pushing the deadline later and giving yourself a reason to delay improvement for another time. The time to improve is now, and that's what I'm going to try to do. Some of my immediate habits and improvements I want to work on are:

• Reduce screen time on my phone by 30 minutes (from 3 hours to 2.5 hours)
• Read at least 1 book every month
• Take more physical notes

You may look at some of these and go "those are easy why do you need to track this?" Well, it may be easy for some, but habits can be tough to break. I'm starting small on a lot of these because I know that if I set a crazy goal - say, lowering my daily screen time from 3 hours to 15 minutes - I WILL fail and end up worse off for it. These realistic goals are far easier to track and are more realistic to maintain. Maybe I oughta to get some sticky notes to put on my monitor for these!

If you have any tips or good habits that you've recently started trying to implement in your daily routines, I'd love to hear about them!

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